Cricket Australia are expecting to tour Bangladesh later this year for the T20 International matches as practice games for the upcoming 2021 ICC T20 World Cup, which will be held in India from October.
Originally, they were expecting to tour Bangladesh for Test series which is the part of the ICC World Test Championship. According to the ICC Future Tours Program (FTP), Bangladesh is also to host England for white-ball matches just ahead of the T20 World Cup. There was a possibility of the matches being played as a triangular series.
Australia last toured Bangladesh in 2017, where they played two-Test series. It was the first time that Bangladesh defeated Australia in Test match, winning a thriller by 20 runs. The series would eventually go on yo be drawn, as Australia would win the final Test match by seven wickets.
In the new ICC FTP, Australia were supposed to tour Bangladesh in 2020. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the tour was postponed. Both boards, Cricket Australia and the BCB, have continued to talk about the tour ever since the postponement of the series last April, but they could not find a window for a Test match tour.
Australia last played against an International match in 2019 Cricket World Cup in a high scoring game. David Warner stars in the match, scoring 166 runs along with Usman Khawaja’s 89 and Aaron Finch’s 53 in Australia’s total of 381-5.
Bangladesh in reply managed only 333-8. Mushfiqur Rahim scored 102 not out alongside Mahmadullah’s 69 and Tamim Iqbal’s 62, losing the match by 48 runs.
Since then, Australia and Bangladesh did not play another match in any format again.
Cricket South Africa writes to ICC on Australia’s cancellation of the tour
Meanwhile, the South African Cricket Board, Cricket South Africa (CSA), has written a letter to the ICC on the after Australia’s decision to pull out of South Africa tour.
According to the letter, it called Australia’s unilateral decision to pull out of the series “against the spirit of sportsmanship” and also has written to the ICC asking it to consider means of redress for less wealthy nations to make up for financial losses when tours do not take place as scheduled.
Stavros Nicolaou, the chairman of CSA’s interim board said:
“There’s got to be some understanding of how we manage the impact to less-wealthy nations. Unilateral decisions of this nature are punitive to less-wealthy cricket-playing nations and there has to be some discussion around redress.”
Australia last played a series against South Africa in February 2020, before the Covid-19 pandemic hit
South Africa has passed the second-wave of the pandemic in recent time, which led to the cancellation of the tour. Stavros Nicolaou believed that was the reason that led Cricket Australia to this decision:
“The reasons Australia cited seemed out of kilter with where the pandemic is. If we had got this communication from them in December it might be justified. The downward trajectory, even with the so-called South African strain, has shown a 75% reduction from the peak.”
“Our preference would have been to ask for a consultation and we would have got the necessary experts on the call and explained the downward trajectory and we could have given assurances about the biosecure base. The decision should have been consultative and we would have seen what other measures we could have taken.”
Was Australia right on pulling out of the tour?
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